Lorentz Violation and Alpha-Decay

TL;DR

This paper calculates how Lorentz violation coefficients for alpha particles relate to those of protons and neutrons, predicting potential anisotropies in alpha-decay rates due to Lorentz violation effects.

Contribution

It provides a method to relate composite particle Lorentz violation coefficients to their constituents, specifically for alpha particles, and discusses possible observable effects.

Findings

Alpha-decay anisotropies could indicate Lorentz violation.

Lorentz violation effects may be exponentially enhanced in quantum tunneling processes.

A framework for connecting composite and constituent Lorentz violation coefficients.

Abstract

Relating the effective Lorentz violation coefficients for composite particles to the coefficients for their constituent fields is a challenging problem. We calculate the Lorentz violation coefficients relevant to the dynamics of an alpha-particle in terms of proton and neutron coefficients. The alpha-particle coefficients would lead to anisotropies in the alpha-decays of nuclei, and because the decay process involves quantum tunneling, the effects of any Lorentz violations could be exponentially enhanced.